Holland (Batavia), 4. England (Britannia), 5. Savoy (Allobroges), 6. Switzerland (Helvetia), 7. Spain (Hispania),than to decorate a street or to found an amphitheatre.

The furthest town of the Allobroges, and the nearest to the territories of the Helvetii, is Geneva.

They thought that they should either persuade the Allobroges, because they did not seem as yet well-affected towards the Roman people, or compel them by force to allow them to pass through their territories.

After having routed these in several battles, he arrives in the territories of the Vocontii in the Further Province on the seventh day from Ocelum, which is the most remote town of the Hither Province; thence he leads his army into the country of the Allobroges, and from the Allobroges to the Segusiani.

At the same time the Ambarri, the friends and kinsmen of the Aedui, apprise Caesar that it was not easy for them, now that their fields had been devastated, to ward off the violence of the enemy from their towns: the Allobroges likewise, who had villages and possessions on the other side of the Rhone, betake themselves in flight to Caesar and assure him that they had nothing remaining, except the soil of their land.

But even if he were willing to forget their former outrage, could he also lay aside the remembrance of the late wrongs, in that they had against his will attempted a route through the Province by force, in that they had molested the Aedui, the Ambarri, and the Allobroges?

He ordered the Helvetii, the Tulingi, and the Latobrigi to return to their territories from which they had come, and as there was at home nothing whereby they might support their hunger, all the productions of the earth having been destroyed, he commanded the Allobroges to let them have a plentiful supply of corn; and ordered them to rebuild the towns and villages which they had burnt.

This he did, chiefly on this account, because he was unwilling that the country, from which the Helvetii had departed, should be untenanted, lest the Germans, who dwell on the other side of the Rhine, should, on account of the excellence of the lands, cross over from their own territories into those of the Helvetii, and become borderers upon the province of Gaul and the Allobroges.

As for Caesar's saying that the Aedui had been styled 'brethren' by the senate, he was not so uncivilized nor so ignorant of affairs, as not to know that the Aedui in the very last war with the Allobroges had neither rendered assistance to the Romans, nor received any from the Roman people in the struggles which the Aedui had been maintaining with him and with the Sequani.

BOOK III I.When Caesar was setting out for Italy, he sent Servius Galba with the twelfth legion and part of the cavalry against the Nantuates, the Veragri, and Seduni, who extend from the territories of the Allobroges, and the lake of Geneva, and the river Rhone to the top of the Alps.

He sets over them the brother of Eporedorix, and orders him to wage war against the Allobroges.

Besides, by secret messages and embassies, he tampers with the Allobroges, whose minds, he hopes, had not yet settled down after the excitement of the late war.

The Allobroges, placing guards along the course of the Rhine, defend their frontiers with great vigilance and energy.

But the Allobroges, who were in the retinue of Aegus and Roscillus, and who had deserted to Pompey, having met on the road a scouting party of Domitius; either from old acquaintance, because they had served together in Gaul, or elated with vain glory, gave them an account of all that had happened, and informed them of Caesar's departure, and Pompey's arrival.

The name, Allobroges, means highlanders, and is derived from Al, "high," and Broga, "land."

So the Carthaginian army marched in the first instance up the Rhone towards the valley of the upper Isere, not, as might be presumed, by the nearest route up the left bank of the lower Isere from Valence to Grenoble, but through the "island" of the Allobroges, the rich, and even then thickly peopled, low ground, which is enclosed on the north and west by the Rhone, on the south by the Isere, and on the east by the Alps.

The population of the Allobroges had strongly occupied the pass.

The Arverni were rivals of the Aedui and friends of the Allobroges, a tribe in the same latitude, but on the east of the Rhone.

The Romans made an alliance with the Aedui, and the proconsul Domitius Ahenobarbus, in 122 or 121 B.C., charged the Allobroges with violating Aeduan territory, and with harbouring the king of the Salyes.

[Sidenote: The Allobroges.]

The Allobroges were helped by the Arverni, and Domitius defeated their united forces near Avignon, with the loss of 20,000 men.

Near its junction with the Rhone, on August 8, 121, he defeated with tremendous carnage the Arverni who had crossed to help the Allobroges.

The king of the Arverni was caught and sent to Rome, and the Allobroges became Roman subjects.

[-39-] Before this happened Vercingetorix, filled with contempt for Caesar because of his reverses, had marched against the Allobroges.

VIENNE (22), an ancient town of France, on the Rhône, 19 m. S. of Lyons; was the chief town of the Allobroges in Cæsar's time, and possesses relics of its connection with Rome; it manufactures silk and woollen fabrics, paper and iron goods, and has a trade in grain and wine.